Warrington
BETRAYAL 926 THE MINERS 983 THE PRINTERS Trial of strength for NGA Retreats and PETER MCINTYRE reviews To Break a Union - The Messenger, the State and the NGA by Mark Dickinson. Published by Booklist Ltd. at £2.95. IN March 1984 as the miners' strike was about to start in earnest, newspaper proprietor Shah Eddie awarded was £73.653 damages against the NGA over its picketting of the Messenger group printing firm at Warrington. In May that year while sun tanned miners were beginning to feel the full might of the operations the police NGA called off its picket Two months later Mr Justice
SS nga Caulfield at Manchester High Court raised the total of fines and damages against the National Graphical Association under the Employment Act to £800,000.
Mr Caulfield who complained of an open conspiracy between the NGA, the NUJ and SOGAT, said about Shah: "Historically he could well become the most hated and despised enemy of the defendant union in parSocialist Viewpoint, No. 5, April 1985. Page 23
COME OFF TE FENCE Demonstrators support Warrington strikers. ticular and associated trade unions in general. In the eyes of the defendants, I have no doubt, Shah is a monster."
The role of chief monster in the eyes of the print unions tends to get handed from palm to palm. Christopher Pole Carew, late of the Nottingham Evening Post, Richard Storey at Portsmouth and Sunderland Newspapers and Rupert Murdoch of Fleet Street would all have their supporters for the title of King Rat. For the present, few would argue with the learned judge.
It is easy to see why this is so. The Shah dispute was significant in two directions. It provided a prologue to the miners strike in the use of the law and the courts, the use oi police powers more draconian than anything seen in 50 years, and the use of the Fleet Street and TV publici-
Riot police at Warrington — a dress rehearsal for the miners. ty machine in casting militant trade unionism in the role of a cancer.
It also had a profound impact inside the printing industry, bouncing the NGA into a sharp change of tack on the new technology front and creating turmoil in relations between the print unions.
It is ironic that a little over a year since the NUJ was cast as a coconspirator with the NGA Stockport and Warrington, the two
Ware at the time of writing almost at war. That is one outcome of
defeat for the printing industry unions at Warrington.
Yet Eddie Shah has little as a person to mark him out for this demonic role. He is little different from a hundred other small time entrepreneurs. His is not even a thought-out opposition to trade unions. He was happy dealing and wheeling with the NGA and only turned to warfare with the union when his deals began to break down. nga
Like Grunwick's George Ward before him, Eddie Shah's significance lay in the timing of his intervention and the way in which the stakes were raised when the court and the law were used to curb the union's attempt to stop trade unionism being stamped out.
There is no doubt that once the battle was joined the NGA fought courageously, and the mass pickets at Warrington were a testimony to the awakening anger inside a deeply conservative layer of the workers movement.
But by that time Shah was almost an irrelevance to the dispute. The shots were being called by Chief Constables, by the Home Secretary and the Cabinet. The collapse of the TUC at the first real test of its oppostion to the Employment laws was not down to Eddie Shah, but to Margaret That-
cher and the years of cutting and running, by Len Murray and his
This book by Mark Dickinson, NUJ between several stools in its attempt to chronicle events and place them in build-up to the mass pickets at Warrington towards the end of 1983 is difficult to follow even for someone who knows the outline.
Despite its taults, it provides a framework for understanding several key points about the dispute and the interviews that Dickinson conducted after the dispute with several of the key participants are revealing in what they show of the build-up to the major battles with Shah, and the abandon-
Folk tales rapidly dictate the way that disputes are remembered, and this book puts on record some of the ways in which the union was duped by Shah, almost willingly duped, in the months leading up to the strike. newspaper in 1973; and in 1979 when he wanted to expand he entering into agreements with the NGA and even applied for an NGA card in case he wanted to do paste-up
Shah agreed to the closed shop when he set up Fineward Ltd at Stockport to provide the origination work for his newspapers. He was also tempting the local NGA branch with talk of providing a press in Stockport
would provide more NGA
Staff were recruited with the help of the local NGA office, signed a deal which excluded him from Newspaper Society and British greements, by paying over the odd: ind promising his staff all sorts of local benefits, including company cars and profit schemes.
However, those who transferred to Shah's outfit, and found they were typesetting and doing the artwork for four newspapers, they were working to the limits their capacity and in conditions that one of them described as chaotic.
For some time chapel members had
disturbed at the amount of advertising work which arrived in the Socialist Viewpoint, No. 5, April 1985. Page 24
office without a stamp showing it had come from NGA recognised
Some strict enforcement of existing NGA rules at this stage might have clarified Shah's role more quickly, but when the chapel took the matter to Arthur Scott, Stockport branch secretary, Scott advised a soft pedal, since he was still hoping for the promised new press. nga
Shah set up the Messenger company in 1981, and he even signed an agreement to operate a press at
In autumn 1981 Shah said he was Stockport, but when the chapel — money to work it and an end to excessive hours, Shah blew up and said that no expansion would take place at
Subsequently it became clear that along. The long period of playing it soft with Shah had not gained the NGA any advantage.
l'he press went into an enterprise zone estate at Warrington and the man chosen to act as overseer was a press operator who had turned his back on the NGA after a dispute at Swale press in 1981.
Shah had installed VDTs at Bury and the press at Warrington, but he still chose sott soap with the NGA, assuring them that the new press would take months of running in before it could be used.
In 1982 Shah threatened redundancies at Stockport if he did not conclude a rapid end to pay negotiatons. John Ibbotson, then national officer NG rovincial newspapers for the
again compromised, the claim down from £45 to £6 to get
He told Dickinson: "We struck a house agreement and I thought that by the moderation that I had shown in
the negotations and the way we had attempted to negotiate the terms, that I had really set the scene for him to be able to co-operate with us and for him to develop his Bury and Warringotn plants wihtout any fear of the kind of blackmail that he had been accusing us of."
Critically, Ibbotson did not secure a specific commitment to transfering work to recognised sources.
Setting was almost immediately put out to other offices and suspicions grew that it was being non-union conditions NGA leadership however caution. It was not until November that they pinned Shah down to admit that papers were already printed at Warrington.
It could have come as little surprise when Shah eventually admitted that his plan was to allow non members to set type at Bury, and that when the NGA officials arrived for a recruitment meeting they found the staff primed with clearly hostile and detailed anti-union questions.
Still, amazingly, the chapel was told to accept work from the non union sources at Bury, and it was not until July 4, 1983, that the staff at Stockport, goaded beyond endurance, were finally called out.
The mass picketting at Warrington is a more familiar part of the story. It was predominantly NGA memmbers that made up the ranks of the pickets and it was the outgoing secretary, Joe Wade, who authorised the mass pickets in the first place as the NGA leadership finally began to fight for its organisation.
The book recounts the abortive talks at ACAS, the increasing role of the Government in the dispute and the bloody scenes in November 1983, culminating in the police charges of November 29/30 and the hounding of pickets across open land, and the breaking up of the NGA mobile dispute caravan.
It recounts vividly the impact that had on NGA members always regarded the police as being society's protectors and the rapid awakening in their ranks.
The action in Fleet Street which stopped the national newspapers, and the subsequent collapse of the employers' stand against the NGA showed the immense power that the union still possesses and makes all the more tragic the collapse of the TUC and the subsequent retreat of the NGA leadership
Some have criticised the NGA for
• off when the TUC failed to pert composition of the FMLN bloc itself, alo which and in the IT organisations vi from but comprises chapels whe won, well eptomised are which pact of coloured by thei have one day strike call.
The view of one of the Six, Alan Royston, about the 1ox
these policies have on the rank and file. seems a waste of time. the start of this dispute. frightened of taking the steps, seemed to be, when roots grass that." done under at Bury. The advised being union Stockport general who had By HARRY SLOAN firmly sub-editing staf technology agreements. smouth (where cabbed on striking tent to (where NUJ members heterogenous been crossing number broken principle. of arrangement an
the TUC is indicative of what effect "When it comes to it, as a body it "They seemed to react to me, the TUC, like our leadership reacted at They were they in the end" would go so far and that's how they hesitant; not saying, well this is the one we've go to fight, are telling them The attitude of the NUM leadership - | s.Bel NUJ extend an